Nothing Ever Stays the Same
Chapter 29- Nowhere Warm
Now the hard part was about to begin; now that the fighting was finished not only did we have go through and judge any surviving members of the opposition, but we also had to face the reality of those we had lost to the fight. As the smoke and ash from the burning corpses began to fill the air of the field Alec, Arthur, and I began to walk back to the formation for the more formal proceedings of the war. When we were stood back in line Aro began the formal proceedings, that's when the first loss hit me in the gut like a punch from Godiva; Marcus, there was no Marcus, there were only two people standing at the front now, Aro, and Caius. Marcus was gone. I looked to Arthur and he seemed to notice the absence as well and it looked to be weighing heavy on him, Alec didn't look surprised, he only looked mournful, I took it to mean that he had saw what had happened.
Aro had been injured at some point during the battle, so I did not look for mercy in his decisions. Caius had lost a brother, so I did not look for kindness in his decisions. I had nearly lost myself, my brother, and my mate, I did not have the energy to find mercy or kindness I was just drained. Not surprisingly Stefan and Vladimir died with the least honour, begging for mercy and squealing like little children, and surprisingly Aro did let some people go, I could only hope that it was a gesture of good faith and not a punishment. When all the judgements had been handed down I didn't want to wait around to see who had lived and who had died, I just wanted to go home, home to my room, my books, my bed; then I wanted to rip it all up and go to my new home, with my new life. I walked off with Arthur and Alec in tow and Aro chased after us.
"I need you to lead the people back to safety." He said to us
"Traitorous whores don't get to lead people" I told him bitterly "Lead your own army for once, put your own effort in for once, maybe then you'll understand."
"Understand what?" he asked bitterly
"Understand that I have already lead these people to safety." I told him dryly and quietly before walking off again.
When I reached the tree line a began to run and I didn't make more than five minutes before Arthur caught up.
"Alec said he would take people back to Volterra that wanted to go to Volterra, and I said I would make sure you got home safely." He said to me before continuing to run in silence. It was nice, he didn't expect me to say anything, and he wasn't put out that I didn't; its probably a good thing that I ended up with someone with a Doctorate in Psychology, despite him being a facetious little brat of a genius. We started running along the coast, not caring for the time of day in the least, we just kept running, it was risky as well as there was always the chance we might be spotted, though with just the two of us the risk of that was very slim; and since we were running day and night with just the two of us the distance was melting beneath us and it seemed that as soon as we had left we were passing Venice and starting to cross inland. A few hours more and we had reached Volterra.
"Something is wrong." Arthur said as he grabbed my arm ad pulled us to a halt at the gates of Volterra
"What is it?" I asked edgily looking around trying to get a feel for everything
"The humans," Arthur began, and I looked at him in anticipation "I can smell their blood; its everywhere." he looked into my eyes, he was afraid, and so was I. I strained my nose and I then I could smell it; it was everywhere, oozing and rotting.
"We need to go in." I said "But we should leave a message for the others." Arthur nodded
"I'll carve something in Latin above the gate" he said as he began scaling the walls to get to the spot he mentioned; I meanwhile walked cautiously into the city, my eyes darted back and forth looking for signs of life. Soon Arthur was standing next to me looking around also.
"We should close the gates; I don't want anyone to slip away" Arthur whispered
"That's a good idea" I answered and we both closed the gates to the city "Lets go to the castle, and see if anything has happened there; stay close to me, it would be unwise to separate when we do not know what is happening." And with that we began discreetly making our way toward the castle, we chose to enter through the garage so as slip unnoticed into the building. We broke down the door and crept our way through the garage level by level, when we got to the door I saw something truly horrific, it was one of the men we had left behind to guard the castle; someone had taken off both of his legs, one of his arms, and taken half of his face. Amazingly he was still alive and when he saw us he started flapping around like a fish out of water to get our attention, Arthur and I ran to him and knelt beside him, I put my finger to my lips to indicate to him to be quiet.
"What happened?" I asked him a deathly whisper
"Newborns, a hundred newborns, stormed the city; they killed everyone and now they are waiting for everyone in throne room, its an ambush. I tried to stop them but I couldn't, so I came here to wait for you"
"Thank-you, is there anything that we can do for you?" I asked him softly
"Please kill me, and then kill them." he asked weakly
"Of course, and I promise you won't feel a thing." Arthur told him
"Thank-you" he then wept
"We will tell stories of your bravery and strength" Arthur whispered softly as he silently and instantly disconnected his head from his shoulders.
"Looks like we have some more killing to do darling." Arthur said as we began walking through the door and into the castle
"I wouldn't have it any other way." I replied
We stormed the castle, taking it level by level, room by room; we were just making sure there wasn't anyone else surreptitiously hanging around the castle before we went and occupied ourselves with a hundred newborns that were in the throne room. Eventually we had made our way to Didyme's garden.
"They're only here to kill us, nothing more, nothing less." Arthur said aloud in safety of the garden
"So it would seem." I agreed "But now that we have scoured every inch of the castle to no avail, they have to be in the throne room, and we have to have a plan." I told him
"From what I've observed, newborns are the most superstitious of all vampires; they probably haven't learned that they might have an ability." Arthur said
"Are you trying to say that we should give them a magic show?" I asked him coyly
"That, my dear, is precisely what I am saying." He said with a smirk.
The plan was set, I was now scaling the back wall of the throne room so that I could position myself in the skylight window which was the only source of light for the immense room. The plan was solid(ish), Arthur would walk in through the front door because he had the best defence and we would start picking them off as stealthily as we could, buying ourselves as much time as we could in the hope that perhaps Felix or someone would be running ahead and could give us some back-up because we knew that we couldn't hold them all of forever, our powers as great and as wonderful as they were had their limits. I was in position and I looked down to see the hundred newborns lazily positioned throughout the room snacking on what was left of the citizens of Volterra; the doors to the room creaked open, all the vampires looked intently at the door starting to stand up and converge on it. Arthur walked through the door and closed it behind him.
"Good-evening children, how can I help you?" he asked suavely
"We want to kill you, and get back to our dinner" one of the vampires said in a sickly voice
"Yes, well, I'm afraid that doesn't fit in with my schedule" Arthur said in a disappointed voice; then they started to run at him, but he hadn't given the signal yet so I had to wait.
"Wait, wait, wait, wait, WAIT" he yelled out and the charging vampires stopped and looked at him intensely "how would you like to see a magic trick?" he asked them
"What's the magic trick" came the voice of a female
"Well, in ten seconds, some of you are going to drop down on the floor screaming; experiencing the worst pain you have ever felt" he said coolly, that was the cue for me, I picked out my targets and when the ten seconds was up I was going to give them a taste of the crippling pain setting. 3,2,1...and action, ten of them dropped to the floor, their screams piercing the stale air in the room.
"Or how about, a stampede" Arthur then called out to them, and by extension, me. And then I switched from the middle of the crowd to the back and I gave them a less intense 'setting' and went to town on them, the pain was such that they started wailing and running in every direction, knocking people down.
"Witchcraft" they started screaming, and Arthur gave them a 'what-are-you-going-to-do-about-it' shrug of his shoulders.
That's when they started to charge at Arthur again; Arthur to his credit kept a cool head as he ducked and weaved around their attacks, his plan was to get them attacking each other, after three minutes of his dodging and the occasional hit Arthur managed to get them to turn on each other, and as silently as a shadow he slipped away from the fight and came and joined me in the skylight.
"That went well I thought, well done to you" he said
"Are we going to go down to them?" I asked
"Lets see how long we can get away with this first" he answered. And we did get away with it for about ten minutes before someone managed to look up and point and scream bloody murder at us, Arthur looked at me and shrugged before he slipped off the ledge and gracefully fell to the floor, I quickly followed him landing not a second after him and joined in on the fight. As far as fighting newborns goes, its fairly easy if you don't let them touch you, and if you have any sort of ability it becomes even simpler, use your ability to stop them from overwhelming you; also they became extremely distracted if you so much as took a finger off, so just my maiming them in such a manner was as good as killing them because more experienced fighters would still go at you if had taken both their arms. About an hour into our massacre Arthur and I had killed about twenty of them each, and given that only ten of them had died with Arthur's let-them-kill-themselves plan, we still had fifty to kill, at least it was looking that daunting until the cavalry arrived.
The Cullen's burst through the main door in a ceremonious fashion, Alec was in the lead and soon the fifty newborns that we had to kill soon came to look more like 3 or 4 with the support of Alec and the Cullen's. The hour of fighting that I SO looked forward too became fifteen minutes as we quickly managed to hack our way through the numbers, none of the newborns putting up anywhere near a decent fight. It ended with me and Arthur pushing two of thrones next to each other and sitting down for a break
"That took a lot longer than I thought it would." I lamented as I lounged on the throne
"Lets never do that again, its far too stressful." Arthur moaned from the throne next to me
"You two are idiots, what made you think you could take on all of them by yourselves?" Alec snapped at us
"I guess we were still in fight mode having run here non-stop." I explained to him
"Not to mention Jane was still in a mood when we got here." Arthur added
"Well that explains Jane at least, what about you Arthur? Why didn't you stop her?" Inquired the soft voice of Carlisle
"I suppose I was upset at my terrible battle stats, that entire battle, however many hundred of enemies and I only got to kill one." Arthur grieved.
Very soon the humans would start figuring that something was wrong, very soon they would come knocking on the gates, very soon the humans would discover that something terrible had happened here and sooner or later they would find us. While they couldn't enter the castle, due to it being private property, they would undoubtedly find things that they shouldn't and as such it is important that we remove the evidence that the castle is being actively used. While I packed up my room, my books, my old life as it were. Using as many trunks and suitcases that I could find; I neatly folded every skirt, dress, blouse and scarf that I owned and gently packed every manuscript and text. While as I was in the process of doing this, Arthur, who had significantly less to pack, was going through my room and packing up all my electronics, such as computers and televisions and placing them pack into the original boxes. After 10 hours of laborious packing I was finished and I looked upon my now sparse room in wonder at how I had managed it. Also while I was doing this Arthur had booked the Cullen's tickets back to the States and they would be flying home soon, well as soon as Aro arrived back. It had been three days since the battle and he wasn't due back for another week or so, and in that time Arthur, Alec and the male Cullen's went through the castle slowly taking out all modern conveniences such as; Kitchen's, Broadband and bathrooms. Everything they removed was tagged and stored in a secret place in the castle so it could be reinstalled.
The fourth day is when the human's began scouring the city; true to our melodramatic fashion we had gathered up all the carcasses that we could and placed them on a pyre in the town square and set it alight and while the boys had been fixing the castle us girls had been running through the city splattering blood across the walls and windows of houses and shops. We overstated the carnage so that it was so intricately messy that human forensics would not be able to function properly with all the blood samples and evidence around the place. On the seventh day Aro arrived back, his face was filled with remorse
"Truly, truly tragic" he lamented "Well done to all of you for the damage control, it was well executed I must admit." After this Caius and Athenadora pulled me aside to inquire about what had happened.
"This is definitely troublesome news, and I fear Volterra is no longer safe for us" he remarked upon hearing my story
"We will have to wait for the humans to leave before we can move anything though, it would be too conspicuous" Athenadora then added
"The biggest problem is moving our visitors from here to the airport" I told them
"We'll have to use the back gate and at night only" Caius said "Its dangerous, but it is less dangerous than the front gate and in the middle of the day, as for moving I get a feeling they will have to open the city up to allow people to sort through their relatives possessions, that will be our first window of opportunity" he continued "I think that will be the best time for you, Alec, and Arthur to leave as well."
We soon found ourselves standing in an airport with the Cullen's about to embark on a plane back to their home, I was wearing a Temperley London Blouse, J Brand denim cargo pants, a pair of ballet flats as well as a new Burberry London trench coat.
"I would like to offer our deepest gratitude on behalf of the Volturi." I said formally to Carlisle
"And we would like to say that we are looking forward to working with you in the very immediate future." Arthur said to them as he coiled his arm around my waist and pulled me close
"When would you like us to start?" Esme asked
"Whenever you're ready; it'll take time to get everything set up, and we understand that it is a big transition and move." Arthur told them
"And the mass funeral, when will that be?" Carlisle asked
"We aren't sure, but I'm confident that it won't be for a while yet." I explained, he nodded and I heard their flight being called. I offered my hand to Carlisle and he took it and we shook fondly
"We'll see you soon." he said before moving on to Arthur, Esme was next, but before I could extend my hand she had pulled me into a hug, one which I gladly reciprocated
"Its been a pleasure." she said to me; next came Alice, she gave me a mighty hug and I thought she might actually squeeze the life out of me. Jasper came after and he gave me a handshake followed through with a quick kiss on the hand. Emmet was next, and he gave me a mighty handshake and a blaring smile; he was followed by Rosalie who gave me a stiff hug as well as a very formal kiss on each cheek. Edward, Bella, and Renesmee were last, Edward and Bella were stiff and each gave me a handshake but little Renesmee was a smiles and waves as they disappeared into the departures lounge.
"It's a shame Alec didn't decide to stay, they're very nice people" Arthur said to me
"They are." I said simply "Come on, its time to the last bit of packing, we are moving tomorrow after all"
"You know, you were always the one we worried about." Athenadora said to me as I stood in my deserted bedroom "Always so bitter and twisted, never in a million years would I have imagined you in this position, I'm very proud of you."
"I feel as if you just simultaneously complimented, and insulted me" I told her
"That's because I did." she said in earnest, I smiled lightly at this.
"Would THEY be proud?" I asked her, referencing those that we had lost in the battle
"Of course they would, this was a family, and they would have wanted nothing more than to see you not only be happy, but pursue that happiness." She said "especially Marcus, he was very fond of you" I smiled again at that.
"And what about Aro?" I pushed
"Aro, hasn't been happy with anything for a while now; so if he doesn't say goodbye, don't take it personally." she explained to me "it's time for you to go, be as happy and successful as you want to be, and do it with our blessings"
"Thank-you" I told her "Will you come visit me at least?" I then asked her
"Visit?" he said taken aback "Jane, I have seen pictures, Caius and I will be living there" she said with a chuckle. I looked over the familiar walls, not for the last time, but for a while at least. I walked down the stone corridor to the common room where I saw Alec sitting down, I sat down next to him.
"So, this is goodbye for now." he said quietly
"I'm sure we'll see each other all the time." I weakly tried to assure him
"No we won't, but that's okay; we'll see each other went it matters." he nudged me
"What!" I scoffed "Like birthdays and Christmas?"
"No, death-day's and Halloween" he said playfully
"I'll miss you" I told him
"I'll miss you as well, but I'm sure we can still go on missions together, after all, we'll be making the rules."
"Good point" I replied as I rested my head on his shoulder
"Where is Arthur?" he asked
"Not sure, off doing Arthur things I'm sure" I replied to him and he chuckled
"When did you get a sense of humour?" he asked
"Not sure, I guess Arthur is rubbing off on me" I said innocently
"Aw, gross Jane, I never wanted to hear you say that" Alec replied in disgust, it took me a second to catch up on what he was thinking.
"Pervert!" I snapped at him as I playfully punched him in the stomach. And that's how that went for another hour until I decided that it was time to go.
I found Arthur in the garage, playing what looked like eenie-meenie-minie-moe.
"What are you doing?" I asked him
"We have to decide which car we are taking" he said pointing to my Porsche and his Maserati. "We can take one now, but we'll have to wait for the funeral before we bring the other one up with us." he explained
"Well which is the least conspicuous?" I asked
"It depends, the Maserati is less conspicuous in Italy, but as for the rest of the journey it might be a bit obvious, the Porsche might be a bit conspicuous in Italy but less so in the rest of Europe." Arthur argued
"Okay then." I said slinking up beside him "We're taking the Porsche." I declared
"Alright then, settled." Arthur said before turning and looking at me. "Are you ready to do this?" he asked
"I won't be ready until I've done it." I told him
"Okay."
"We should go today, in half an hour; just get our bags and leave, I don't want to say good-bye to anyone" I said
"You mean you don't want to be reminded of who isn't here to say good-bye?" Arthur asked, and I nodded because it was the truth, it was a hard truth though. We jumped into the car, Arthur was going to drive as far as the France-Switzerland border before I took over for him. The drive was quiet and the mood was sombre as we slowly wound our way through Europe toward our destination.
"I think it'll be hard to go back now" I said as I gazed out of my window and onto the Swiss country-side
"Why do you say that?" Arthur asked
"Because in my head I've left, and so has everyone who made it a home" Arthur took my hand in his and just held it "I can still see their faces, hear their screams"
"That's a good thing" Arthur told me and I looked at him quizzically, not quite understanding how the sounds and sights that were torturing me were a good thing "now you have something to hold onto, something to fight for; because you know the pain, you will do what you can to stop others from feeling it."
"That's all very well and profound, but it doesn't the hurt"
"Nothing will stop the hurt, except, and I appreciate the clichéd nature of this, time."
"You're a psychologist, and you have no better advice to offer me?" I queried
"Technically I only have a doctorate in Psychology, the board that governs who becomes a Psychologist or not deemed me too young."
"Don't bullshit me Corcoran, just because you haven't been officiated doesn't mean you don't know all the content"
"It wouldn't be ethical for me to do that."
"You kill people to survive and you want to talk to me about ethics?"
"What I do to survive isn't in question right now; what is in question is what I do for a living"
"What did I say about bullshit"
"In honesty, we are vampires! Psychology is for humans"
"Is that your final answer?" I asked him, he nodded his eyes firmly set on the road "Well I always knew you were a quack"
"I'm not going to have this conversation with you"
"Quack, quack, quack, quack"
"Stop that Jane, or so help me I will pull this car over and I will psychoanalyse you, I will psychoanalyse you so hard you'll walk sideways for the rest of your existence" he snapped
"What does psychoanalysis and walking sideways have in common?" I asked him playfully
"Sex Jane, everything comes down to sex; honestly how can you call yourself a worldly person and not know that"
"Are you saying that your method of psychoanalysis is to have sex?"
"I didn't say that, you said that, I just said that sex is the common denominator; besides having sex with you in that context would so not help your 'daddy' issues"
"I don't want to play this game anymore" I snapped
"That's what I thought" Arthur replied smugly.
After hours and hours of driving and travelling we were finally back in Ireland and Arthur was back behind the wheel driving toward our new home and I didn't take long for the ostentatious Porsche to find its way winding through the driveway of our new home.
"An empty house has never looked so attractive, has it?" Arthur asked me
"I can't honestly say that it has."
